I pulled this one off my shelf after I finished my plane books and had been reminded how much I truly love to read. Some books are like old friends and I enjoy rereading as much as I enjoy re-watching some of my favourite movies. It’s comforting to know what’s going to happen, and yet good books often have layers of meanings that are revealed upon rereading, the same way cartoons often contain adult jokes that you don’t notice until you end up re-watching them one day when babysitting.

This book isn’t precisely like that because it is a fairly short and simple story, but I loved it the first time I read it and I still enjoy it. I believe it was one of many books given to me throughout my life by my dear aunt and uncle, Joan and Charlie, who also gave me my first Harry Potter book (they have good taste and I’ve loved nearly everything I’ve gotten from them).

I think more stories of unconventional, imperfect but loveable girls can only make the world a better place.

I got this hardcover for some steal like $6 as a backup read for the plane home. However it had been so long since I read the rest of the wicked lovely series I was a bit lost through probably the first half of the novel. That said I liked this ending (unlike some, looking at your Divergent *glare*). I preserve that this is my favourite paranormal romance series. It reminds me of the old faery tales I read when I was young where faeries were tricky and magical but dangerous (and allergic to iron.)

P.S. I prefer the spelling fairy to faery but I used the latter anyways in ode to the series.

I read these because I saw the trailer for divergent and I wanted to check out the movie, but not before reading the book (since the book is usually better anyways). I wasn’t disappointed. I think it’s an interesting world and I liked the characters. I was proud of myself for reading something that was upsetting and addressed death so much without becoming anxious or panicked. It felt like I had some control over what I could enjoy instead of being too fragile to watch or read anything that might be upsetting. However, I finished Allegiant two days ago and I still feel pretty heart broken. The last time I think I cried so hard during reading a book was my first time through TFIOS. I don’t know how they will make that last novel into a movie it’s so heartbreaking. I did find an interview with the author where she discussed her rational for the heartbreaking-est bit but I still tried to find fan fiction that ended it differently, to put my poor heart at ease (I normally don’t read fan fiction so this was stretching for me, I actually also did this with Life Unexpected).

My feelings are all jumbled up inside my throat still.

I really did enjoy divergent though, even if the other two were a bit upsetting.

I wouldn’t have written that ending though. I still don’t want to believe it.

I’ve had an unusual mix of media consumption as of late. I’ve been watching a lot of tv shows I had lukewarm feelings towards on Netflix while doing schoolwork. However, I liked some much more than others. In addition I have been doing quite a bit of reading over the holidays. So I’ve decided to write up some feelings on a bunch of these and queue them up. I’ll be tagging them with ‘Media Consumption Musings’ if you’d like to follow along.

Much like nerds argue whether Kirk or Picard is the better starship captain (Picard), philosophers can’t seem to stop talking about infinity. This thought experiments assumes we have an infinite number of monkeys randomly typing on an infinite amount of keyboards over an infinite amount of time.

Because of how mind-numbingly infinite infinity really is, the probability of one of those monkeys eventually banging out the complete works of Shakespeare is 100 percent. This is because any story is just one long string of characters. And while the probability of randomly typing it out is incredibly small, it isn’t zero, so given an infinite period of time, it will occur. Unfortunately, the same holds true for Fifty Shades of Grey.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it would happen quickly though. Some mathematicians have theorized that it would take longer to achieve a pristine (error-free) replication than the current age of the universe.

Correction time! What you are saying would be correct given a finite number of monkeys. However, when dealing with an infinite number of monkeys it will take the time it takes a monkey to type, say Hamlet, to get a copy of Halmlet. In fact, when you have an infinite monkey army, Hamlet won’t be the first thing a single monkey types, but that an infinite number of monkeys type. And infinite copies of 50 Shades of Grey, The Fault in Our Stars, Hunger Games will also be produced, all by the end of the week if the monkeys are quick enough.

As far as I can recall, none of the adults in my life ever once remembered to say, ‘Some people have thick skin and you don’t. Your heart is really open and that is going to cause you pain, but that is an appropriate response to this world. The cost is high, but the blessing of being compassionate is beyond your wildest dreams. However, you’re not going to feel that a lot in seventh grade. Just hang on.’

They are making How I Live Now into a movie and I don’t know how I feel about that except a little choked up. I loved that book so much, I hope they do it justice. This on top of Ender’s Game and The Fault in Our Stars. Plus Catching Fire. I just have a lot of feelings. I don’t want to have my personal worlds ruined by poor adaptions. There’s just something special about books.

I am SO, SO EXCITED to share my SVA thesis film at long last!!!!! This is what I spent most of the past year working on. It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever made, and I still couldn’t have done it without the help and support of a bunch of really awesome people. I strongly recommend watching it in HD and I hope you like it a lot! 🙂

!!!! WATCH IT NOW WATCH THE WHOLE THING…GO

An absolutely GORGEOUS animation by an amazingly talented person I had the privilege to meet this year at SVA! Watch it now!!!

A post came out in the NewStatesmen today by Sophia McDougall called “I Hate Strong Female Characters.” A lot of you may have already seen it. It’s been shared by lots of people I know, I’ve seen links from several sources show up on my dash, and I RTedit myself earlier today.

I highly recommend you read it for yourself, but the gist of it is that Hollywood has taken the call for “more strong female characters” to mean that we literally want strong female characters. That THAT is the way to combat the stereotypical female characters that have always existed in Hollywood movies (i.e. damsel in distress, sexy eye candy, etc.) and provide appropriate representation for women in films and television (though this is much more a problem you see in movies than TV). Moreover, that the public also often misinterprets the idea of wanting “strong female characters” to mean this, and that male characters (protagonists in particular) are not held to this same intensely literal meaning when categorized as strong male characters. Male protagonists are allowed be a number of different, varying things, and strong in ways that may not always include or highlight physical (or mental or emotional) strength. And the post also brings up perhaps the worst offense of all, that female characters categorized as SFCs are often shown displaying excessive amounts of strength or physical aggression towards men in ways that would cause us as an audience to recoil if the roles were reversed and it was a man acting that way to a woman — the reason being that the audience assumes (or the people behind the film assume the audience assumes) the female character is “weak” until it is unequivocally proven otherwise, something the male characters don’t have to prove.

The article really covers everything, and I agree with it so very much, but this is something I’ve been thinking about incessantly for the past year or two, both in my writing and in watching things, so I’m gonna talk about it because it’s my tumblr and I want to.